Today's Paper
» NATIONAL
» NEW DELHI

“Sheila’s publicity blitz will end now”

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Chief Ministerial candidate for Delhi, Prof. Vijay Kumar Malhotra, on Tuesday said the announcement of poll dates for the Delhi Assembly elections would bring to an end colossal wastage of public money on unnecessary advertisements by the Delhi Government that had failed on all counts over the past ten years and had been using the publicity blitz to hide its shortcomings.

Prof. Malhotra said the Sheila government had even failed to provide clean and safe drinking water: either the people were not getting any water at all, or were getting water that was unfit for consumption. “The water rates have also gone up by five times and even power is much costlier now because of fast-running meters,” he charged.

Charging that the Congress Government was corrupt, he said pollution in the Yamuna stood testimony to this as the river remains polluted even after thousands of crores have been spent on cleaning it. Also, Prof. Malhotra charged that by retaining the file of the Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru with it for so long, the CM had shown that she lacks commitment to fight terrorism.

The senior BJP leader said he was certain that people would vote the Congress out this time and the BJP would win at least a two-thirds majority in the House of 70. “We had also won the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Cantonment Board elections by two-thirds majority and would repeat the performance in the Assembly elections,” he asserted.

Prof. Malhotra, who has had a long and distinguished career as an administrator and political functionary, said he would work for the development of Delhi and cleaning of the Yamuna and restoring it to its past glory would be one of his main targets. The party would be coming out with a manifesto by October 20 and a charge-sheet against the Delhi Government would also be released soon.

About selection of candidates, he said the names would be finalised by this month-end. “Since people envisage that the BJP would win the elections, they have applied in large numbers for tickets and we have about 3,500 applicants to choose from,” he added.

Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan said the workers of all the 16 districts, 280 mandals and 11,000 polling booth committees were busy with preparations for the polls and would reach out to the 1.75 crore population that is crying under “the misrule of the Congress” in Delhi. “The Delhi Government has not been able to provide even the basic amenities and every family is suffering because of the high prices of all commodities. Corruption has also crossed all limits,” he said, adding that BJP workers had started mobilising public opinion against the policies of the Sheila government.

He also announced that the party’s State headquarters at 14 Pandit Pant Marg had been converted into an election campaign office and various committees had been constituted to steer the campaign.